The soul of Ruth Pemberton of Beacon Hill and Vassar, having been west of the Missouri one month and at the ’Dobe Walls two days, was slipping into savagery—so friendly is retrogression, so easy comes reversion to type! She had supposed she loved Count Banti; and here was her soul going out to Mr. Masterson! How she dwelt upon him, when, bronzed of brow, cool of eye, alert, indomitable, he rode in from the day’s kill! The rattle of his spurs as he swung from the saddle was like a tune of music! Not that Ruth Pemberton wore these thoughts on her face. She hid them from others, she even concealed them from herself. Had one told her that she was beginning to love Mr. Masterson, she would have stared. Count Banti himself never thought of so hideous a possibility; his jealous petulance arose solely from her calm neglect of himself. Ruth Pemberton asked Mr. Masterson how old he was, and it pleased her to hear that he was several months her superior. Civilisation is a disguise, and in travel one loses one’s mask. One’s nature comes out and basks openly in new suns. This is so true that the West, when a compliment is intended, says of a man: “He’ll do to cross the plains with.” What the West means is that on such an expedition, what is treacherous or selfish or cowardly in a man will appear. Wherefore, to say of one that he will do to cross the plains with, is a most emphatic declaration that the one thus exalted is unmarked of vices. Ruth Pemberton, who on Beacon Hill would have paled at a pin-prick and the red bead of blood it provoked, now thought kindly of mere slaughter, and insisted on riding ten miles with Mr. Masterson to the buffalo grounds to witness the day’s work. “But, my child!” cried Madam Pemberton. “It’s the only chance, mamma, I’ll ever have to see a buffalo killed.” Madam Pemberton was not a deep mind, but exceeding shallow; to say that any chance was an only chance struck her as a reason for embracing it. Ruth Pemberton was to journey to the buffalo grounds in the buckboard; Count Banti might accompany her, a Mexican would drive. Mr. Masterson, when told of the good company he would have on his next day’s hunt, made no objection. To the direct question as to whether the country were possible for buckboards, he said it was. “What do you think yourself, Bob?” asked Mr. Masterson, when that evening he met Mr. Wright in Mr. Hanrahan’s bar, and they discussed this feminine eagerness to see dead buffaloes. “If we cross up with a bunch of Cheyennes, there may be trouble. It’s a chance they’d try to capture the girl. Besides, they’ve got it in for me about that hair on my bridle.” “There’s no Cheyennes about,” said Mr. Wright. “When they drift within twenty miles of us, they are sure to show up at the store, and I haven’t seen an Indian for two days.”